From New Labour to Rudd/Gillard – transferring social policy

ABSTRACT

From 2007 to 2010, there were national Labour governments in Britain and Australia, the longest and only third time this had occurred since the second World War. The period of New Labour was closing in the UK, and in Australia the Rudd government came to power after 11 years in opposition, directly influenced by the, at times, trailblazing UK Labour government. In the domain of social policy, New Labour was a source of policy inspiration and transfer. Specifically, the Rudd/Gillard governments borrowed heavily its ‘social exclusion’ agenda, and also the use of ‘compacts’ with the third sector. This article examines the policy diffusion and transfer between the UK and Australia, and in doing so offers critical insights into the policy transfer literature. The article examines the reasons for the Australian Labor Party's adoption of these policies, and links this to wider dilemmas and identity crisis that are afflicting centre-left governments across the globe.

KEYWORDS:

• Social policy
• New Labour
• ALP
• policy transfer
• policy diffusion
• social inclusion
• compacts

Notes on contributor

Dr Rob Manwaring is a Lecturer in politics and policy at Flinders University, Adelaide. His book, The Search for Democratic Renewal was published with Manchester University Press in 2014.

ORCID

Rob Manwaring http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3853-9250

Notes

1. Methodologically, this article takes a qualitative, case study approach using documentary analysis of the main social policy agendas (Yin 2014). The empirical work is drawn from political speeches and other relevant ‘grey’ literature (Bryman 2012). It is acknowledged that much of the mapping of transfer has been conducted by others, notably Butcher (2011, 2014), and draws upon this existing secondary literature.

2. In 2007, in the run-up to the federal election, and after the publication of the ‘Little Children are Scared’ Report (Wild and Anderson 2007), the Liberal government under John Howard launched a series of controversial welfare initiatives in the Norther Territory (see Toohey 2008).

3. For ease of reference, the term ‘third sector’ will be used in this article. The third sector is constituted by the various and heterogeneous actors and agencies mostly situated within civil society, including charities, voluntary groups, and mutual and co-operative organisations. This is sometimes described as the ‘not-for-profit sector’, and the related health and social welfare organisations in Australia are often referred to as the ‘community sector’. There are on-going definitional and normative issues relating to the ‘third sector’ label (see Alcock and Kendall 2011; Butcher 2015).